effrontery

Etymology

It is borrowed from French effronterie,^{[2][3][4][5][6][7]} from effronté (“shameless”),^[2][3][8][6] from Old French esfronté (“shameless, brazen”).^[3][4][9] The French adjective is usually traced to Late Latin effrōns (“barefaced, shameless”),^{[3][9][6][10]} formed with ex- (“out”) and frōns (“forehead, brow”), the source of front.^[3][9][5] Because the adjective appears only in Late Latin, some scholars start instead from Vulgar Latin *exfrontātus, from the phrase ex fronte (“without a brow”), and compare Italian sfrontato;^[4][8][9] the American Heritage Dictionary has *effrontātus, as an alteration of the Late Latin word.^[5] Collins and Dictionary.com derive the noun from a simpler esfront.^[11][12]

Earliest recorded meaning

Shameless boldness: Merriam-Webster gives 1697 as the first known use,^[6] and the Shorter Oxford and the Oxford Dictionary of English the late 17th century.^[10][13] The OED, Etymonline and Barnhart have 1715, the OED's first quotation being from the preface to a work by M. Davies,^[2][3][4] and Dictionary.com has 1705–15.^[12]

Semantic evolution

The image behind the word is the forehead, though sources differ on how:^[14][9] Weekley read the French adjective as "without brow" for blushing,^[14] and Barnhart reports the same reading of the Latin phrase,^[4] while Collins and Ayto see a forehead thrust forward, as in "putting on a bold front" or a "barefaced lie".^[11][9] Barnhart adds parallels in German Stirn (“forehead, also impudence”) and Old English steornede (“having a big forehead, bold”),^[4] and Etymonline notes that Johnson's Dictionary gives forehead itself a secondary sense "impudence".^[3] English had a verb effront in the 17th century, meaning to treat with effrontery according to Etymonline.^[3] Johnson (1755) defined the noun as "Impudence; shamelessness; contempt of reproach".^[15]

Timeline

• 1697 – shameless boldness.^[6] The OED and Etymonline date the word to 1715.^[2][3]

Meanings

Noun

1. Shameless or insolent boldness; impudence, audacity: He had the effrontery to ask her for another loan.^{[6][11][5][2]}
2. An act or instance of such boldness; in the plural, effronteries.^[5][2]

Related words

• affront
• front
• effront

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b c d e f Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
5. ^ a b c d e The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
6. ^ a b c d e f Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
7. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
8. ^ a b Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
9. ^ a b c d e f Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
10. ^ a b Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
11. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
12. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
13. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
14. ^ a b Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
15. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.